


Beyond the Clouds

by sockfics



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abaddon & Dean Winchester Friendship, Alpha Benny Lafitte, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Castiel is an evil rapist douchebag in the fic that inspired this so he has to be here too, Charlie Bradbury & Dean Winchester Friendship, Chef Benny Lafitte, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dean Winchester Has PTSD, Discussion of Abortion, Exactly What It Says on the Tin, M/M, Not My Fault, Omega Dean Winchester, Oral Sex, Past Castiel/Dean Winchester, Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape Recovery, Rimming, This is a response to someone else’s fic, omega!Abaddon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:21:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22865491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sockfics/pseuds/sockfics
Summary: Ten years after being date-raped, Dean Winchester has created a new life for himself.  He has a career, friends, even a favorite place for lunch.But beginning again doesn’t mean the past has been erased.  It just means that it takes longer for us to realize that even the things we wanted to leave behind never really are.
Relationships: Benny Lafitte/Dean Winchester
Comments: 18
Kudos: 137





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Third Date](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9089455) by [Lucifers_Pony](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucifers_Pony/pseuds/Lucifers_Pony). 



> I do not own Supernatural or any of the characters in it. This fic has been in my head for a while, ever since reading “Third Date” by Lucifers_Pony, and is therefore inspired by that fic. Technically, it is a sequel to that fic. Attempts to reach Lucifers_Pony to discuss this fic prior to posting received no response, so I can only assume that they have no objection.
> 
> Comments are moderated because flames will be summarily deleted without response. Feedback, whether positive or constructively-intended, is always welcome.

**~~~***~~~**

If they had claimed him then and there, he wouldn’t have resisted. He’d been in nowhere near the mindset to try. All Dean had been able to focus on was the way it felt to be knotted and pumped full against his will, by father and son in turn after turn, until a call had come across the radio and Sheriff Novak had bid his son to clear off before one of his deputies found them.

Castiel had dressed the limp, unresisting Dean like a doll, repositioned the passenger seat and driven Dean home. Dean had said nothing the entire way back to the Winchester house, not even when Castiel had slipped a hand around Dean’s head, pulled him in for one last now-unwanted kiss, and whispered: “I can’t wait to see what you look like with my pups stretching that pretty belly.”

Something in Dean had coalesced at that. Still saying nothing, he’d ducked out of Castiel’s grip as he’d opened the passenger door and stepped out into his parents’ driveway. Castiel had called out a mockingly sweet “sleep tight” as Dean had closed the passenger door on him, and then driven off into the damp Kansas night, leaving Dean standing there, still as impassive stone.

Before Dean could have thought better of the instinct, he’d let himself into the house, grabbed the keys to his father’s Impala from where they’d hung just inside the kitchen door, and exited again as quietly as he could.

He’d been out of the driveway himself before the floodlight overlooking the driveway had winked on in the rearview mirror. But he couldn’t have afforded to think about it. Couldn’t have afforded to stop and think for even a moment, or he would’ve been lost in tears and nausea and the horror of what had been done to him over the previous few hours.

Instead, he’d focused on the way his jeans had been growing damp and tacky against his ass and legs. What it meant. What it could mean. Focused as though his very life depended on it, and drove.

**~~~**

By the time he’d gotten to Overland Park Hospital in Kansas City nearly an hour later, it had only been the fear of crashing his father’s precious classic car that had kept Dean awake. He’d nearly stumbled exiting the car once he’d parked it in the lot for the emergency room, but somehow he’d found enough balance to propel himself towards the double-doors and the light of salvation shining from within them.

How he’d made it to the intake desk, he had no idea. The nurse, a no-nonsense-looking matron that smelled like beta, hand sanitizer and jasmine, had barely glanced at him before asking his name and preparing to hand him a clipboard.

“Dean Winchester,” he’d told her. “I’ve been raped.”

And then he’d had the nurse’s full attention, as well as several other people’s, because the moment those words had left his mouth, there had been nothing left to keep him from vomiting everything he’d eaten for the past three days onto the hospital’s olive-drab linoleum tile floor.


	2. Chapter 2

**~~~***~~~**

_Ten Years Later_

“There you are, cher.”

Glancing up from his computer, Dean couldn’t help a shy smile as Benny approached with a large coffee in one hand and his sandwich order in the other. The alpha was actually the owner of the cafe and head chef, but somehow, he never seemed too busy to personally bring Dean’s usual Friday lunch to his table. “Thank you. I waved my waitress off when I got here and forgot to order.”

“Can’t have you goin’ hungry while you’re tryin’ to write grant proposals.” Setting the plate and mug down, he beamed a warm smile at the omega before glancing around. “Would it be all right if I joined you for a minute?”

“It’s your cafe,” Dean replied, adding a touch of sugar to his coffee before taking a sip to cover the nervous tremble around his mouth as he said it. He was fairly sure why Benny wanted to talk, after all. At least he was doing it in public. It made Dean feel safer, if no less anxious.

That smile twitched with amusement, and then the broader man fetched his own coffee and sat down across from Dean. “We been seein’ each other for ‘bout a month now.”

Focusing on the proposal he was writing for the museum’s expansion of their accessibility technology, Dean flicked a glance at Benny over the top of his laptop. “Mm-hmm.”

“And it occurred to me last night that, for all the time we’ve spent together, I’ve never cooked for you.”

“And here I was thinkin’ that you’d made all those po’ boys yourself.” It was a dodge of the point and Dean knew it. But he was hoping he could forestall this just a little bit longer…

Benny’s sardonic expression denied that hope. “I’m saying I’d like us to move this courtship forward, Dean. Let me cook you dinner tomorrow night. My place or yours; wherever you’re comfortable. I got a beautiful-”

“I don’t think I can make it.”

The abruptness of the answer brought Benny up short. His eyes narrowed on Dean for a moment. “Sure, cher. No problem. Tell you what: you take a look at your schedule, find a night when you’ve got nothing going on at the museum, and if you wanna have dinner, you give me a call. All right?”

“Sure.” The word felt like lead on Dean’s lips. “I’m sorry; I’ve gotta get this done by tonight-”

“No problem, cher.” Benny stood up with his coffee, his previous charming expression replaced with a shuttered, distant look. “I hear you loud and clear.”

And just like that, he walked away, leaving Dean to his work and a muffuletta that suddenly tasted like ash.

**~~~**

“I just don’t understand,” came a muffled, irritated voice from beneath the engine block.

“That’s right,” Dean returned hotly from where he sat beside the heavy open tool kit. “You don’t. I was just telling you it happened because you bitch at me when I don’t give you updates, not because you’re my therapist.”

The slender, buxom figure shoved out from beneath the car on her creeper with a disgruntled snarl. “I’m the closest thing you’ve got when it comes to people you actually talk to, Winchester. Now give it up.”

_... giving it up on the third date…_

If Dean hadn’t been so caught up in the echoes, he would’ve noticed that Abaddon (Abigail Donna on her birth certificate, though that was a closely guarded secret) had gone slack-jawed in surprise at his reaction to the phrase. Over a decade since that night, and he was still caught off-guard by the tiny reminders that could bring the whole thing slamming back into the forefront of his memory.

“Winchester?” Long experience with seeing episodes of PTSD (and some personal experience with it, but that was none of anyone’s business) meant that Abaddon knew better than to touch him until he was out of it or too deep to care. “Dean…?”

Her voice, pitched lower and more concerned than normal, was just jarring enough to break through. Dean shook himself hard, took three deep breaths and accepted the bottle of water that she passed him. “I’m okay.”

“The fuck you are,” she retorted hotly. “You think I could marry a woman like Bela and not know trauma dissociation when I see it? What the fuck did I say?”

“It’s not important.” Dean took another swig of water and grimaced at the hard look she shot him. “Seriously, Abaddon; it’s just this thing with Benny’s got me all twisted up. I haven’t had a reaction like that in a couple years.”

“Well, if he’s triggering you by pushing too hard, then you had every right to dump his ass,” Abaddon insisted. “No matter how much of a teddy bear he is.”

“I didn’t dump him exactly,” Dean hedged. “I just told him I wasn’t gonna be available and he left the invite open-ended.”

“But you turned it down because of…” Abaddon gestured vaguely with the socket wrench in her hand. “Whatever’s behind what just happened here?”

Another swig of water. Because hydration is important, and nothing at all to do with his mouth suddenly going dry. “Something like that.”

“Then trade in the etouffes for tuna melts and lose his number.” Lying back on her creeper again, Abaddon slid back beneath the car to resume her work. “Two weeks, three tops, and he’ll get the message without you having to say a thing.”

“Suddenly full of advice for someone that doesn’t understand why I turned him down.”

The sarcastic quip had Abaddon shoving back out from under the car to glare at him. “Listen up, Winchester: I didn’t get where I am in this world by needing cue cards. Whatever happened to you is on a level with what Bela’s rut-happy bastard father did to her. And don’t bother with the whole misery-poker thing because it’s beside the point. Someone did something fucked up somewhere in that mysterious past of yours, and that’s all I need to know.”

“Omegas back each other up?” Dean asked.

“Bet your underwear-model ass we do.” She rolled back under the car. “Fuck Benny. Now let me get back to work, or you’ll have to explain to your boss why this job suddenly cost double.”

Dean sighed and settled back to watch her work on the museum’s latest acquisition. _Yeah, fuck Benny… that’s the problem, all right._

**~~~**

He wasn’t being fair to Benny. Dean knew that, rationally. The alpha hadn’t objected to Dean’s refusal to consider going on a date after dark, or to the omega’s insistence on driving himself to whatever location they’d agreed upon. He was a perfect gentleman that read Dean’s body language like he’d been born knowing it. Other than a few polite kisses when they’d parted after their lunch dates, and carefully taking Dean’s hand when they’d explored an art exhibit at one of the local museums, Benny hadn’t pressed for anything physical.

But then again, neither had Castiel. He’d been respectful and polite and charming right up to the moment he’d had Dean in a trap that the omega hadn’t even seen being set, and then he and his father had both taken what they’d wanted.

He’d seen Benny’s offer coming, at least. There had been careful, elliptical hints around the idea of spending time together that wasn’t always in public places. Questions that were easy to write off as the alpha wanting to know Dean better, but that had an underlying nudge to them, testing how receptive Dean was to the idea of being alone with the alpha for more than a few minutes in Dean’s office at the museum. He’d been getting ready to shoot down Benny’s invitation, no matter what its form, knowing that it would probably result in a swift end to the only romantic relationship he’d dared to indulge since that horrible night.

But that didn’t have any effect on how much Dean hated the idea.

It was for the best, he’d told himself. He kept telling himself that for a full week afterwards as well, having every intention of taking Abaddon’s advice and just letting a combination of absence and silence speak for him. Benny was an alpha in his prime, with a successful cafe that offered a taste of the French Quarter to the San Francisco Bay. It wouldn’t be long before another omega that would be more receptive to his advances caught the big Creole’s eye. And for all that his naive teenage self hadn’t seen how shallow Castiel’s manners and mannerisms had been at the time, the decade since had taught Dean how to see past the polished surface that so many alphas hid beneath.

He’d met good alphas too, of course. Alphas like his uncle Bobby and mother and aunt Ellen, who were devoted to their mates. Like his brother Sam, or Rufus Turner, his uncle Bobby’s oldest friend, who had yet to find mates but were fiercely protective of betas and omegas alike, and refused to tolerate anyone that tried to take advantage of them the way Castiel had done to him. Even Bela, Abaddon’s mate, who possessed far too much cunning for anyone’s good, had never made Dean feel unsafe. But then again, Bela was much too intelligent to risk Abaddon’s wroth by attempting to make time with any other omega, consensually or otherwise. Not to mention madly in love with the nearly-feral red-headed omega.

No, Benny wouldn’t come after Dean for breaking up with him. Dean knew that. For all that he was an alpha, and had finally begun to lose patience with not being able to bed Dean in exchange for all of his chivalry, Benny was a good man. The ways he gave of himself for the community, which never came off as self-aggrandizing or as a display designed to lure omegas onto his knot, proved that much.

Then again, that was the problem. Because as the week passed him by and Dean’s panic at knowing Benny was going to try and set up a scenario to get Dean into bed receded, Dean found himself missing the gentle drawl of Benny’s sarcasm when they talked. The warmth of the bigger man’s smile and the way his eyes lit up when he noticed Dean in the cafe. The quiet strength in those hands, and the strangeness of the safety that Dean felt when they touched his shoulder or cupped his face during one of their brief but endlessly tender kisses.

Dean didn’t want to give Benny up. He was a good man. The kind of alpha that wasn’t threatened by an omega having a thriving career. It was only natural that he would want his omega to spread for him, to take his knot and service his pleasure and whelp his pups.

And Dean even knew, in the rational part of his mind, that sex between consenting partners didn’t hurt. Wasn’t humiliating. Could be amazing and intense and all of the things that made the world crazy for it. He’d just been hoping that he’d fall for a nice knot-less beta so that he could leave the whole painful mess in the past and finally, finally forget.

Benny was an alpha. One that had stirred feelings in Dean that he hadn’t even allowed himself to think about in ten years. That Dean had somehow, despite all his best efforts to protect himself, managed to fall for. That Dean didn’t want to lose, despite the fact that he probably already had.

Three more days passed before Dean finally made a decision he was sure he was going to regret.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please mind the tags for this chapter. Please also be aware that, as a work of fiction, the content of this chapter is not, under any circumstances, to be taken as advancement or dissemination of, or advocacy for, any opinion or agenda.
> 
> As always, flames (or worse) will be deleted without response.

**~~~***~~~**

Locking up after the last of his employees had left for the night, Benny found himself drifting aimlessly through his cafe kitchen for a few minutes. He didn’t particularly want to go up to his apartment, despite how appealing it would be to seek his bed. Both of them were too empty of late, especially in the wake of a certain omega’s refusal to consider gracing them with his presence.

It wasn’t the first time that Benny had lost a potential life partner. Andrea had shared his life and his bed for five years, only to betray him by taking his signature recipes and starting her own catering business with the sponsorship of a wealthy alpha that she’d met while he’d been working the ungodly hours that came with paying his dues as a sous chef. And so he’d taken the money he’d been saving towards starting his own restaurant and moved as far from the bayous of his home as he could, resolved to start over and make the best of it.

He hadn’t expected the mystery he’d found in Dean. When he’d decided to flirt with the gorgeous omega, the defenseless surprise in those bright green eyes had captivated him, and the faint blush that had stained the tips of those delicate ears had made Benny’s mouth water to nibble them. To hear the beautiful man before him gasp and see those eyes flutter closed with want.

But for all Dean’s beauty, and the delightfully sarcastic wit that the omega could fire off at a moment’s notice, there were secrets tucked into the corners of that sensual mouth. A shadow in those viridian eyes that no smile could ever seem to banish completely. Guarded and cautious in ways that went beyond simple coquettishness, the desire to win the trust that Dean always seemed to hold back had only grown more intense as Benny had realized how deeply and quickly he’d fallen for the younger man.

Feelings that Dean either didn’t or couldn’t return, as it turned out.

With a final heaving sigh, Benny pushed himself out of his moping reverie and went upstairs for the night. Ten days’ silence was answer enough, and at least this time, investing his heart into someone who couldn’t do the same hadn’t cost him a key piece of his livelihood on top of the heartache. He would survive, and move on, and eventually find someone who would love him back. For tonight, he would take a shower and get some well deserved sleep, and in the morning, he would put Dean Winchester out of his mind for good. It was a good, solid plan.

A plan that went tumbling by the wayside as he opened the door at the top of the stairs and was immediately assaulted by the scent of apples and leather and motor oil. The scent of the very last omega he’d expected to scent in his private living space after the past week and a half.

Except now the apple notes were sickly, like one gone rotten after smashing to the ground. The leather was decayed, the oil fouled and cloudy from overuse. This wasn’t the scent of an omega that was nervous about how his presence would be received after an argument. This was fear. The rank, undiluted fright of an omega in distress.

The door standing open and forgotten, Benny charged into his flat, his protective instincts rearing up as he scented for where Dean was hiding. He must be hiding, seeking sanctuary in Benny’s home from some unknown threat… a threat Benny would rend to pieces for making his omega so afraid…

Except Dean wasn’t hiding. Not exactly.

Following the scent into his bedroom, Benny was shocked to find that Dean wasn’t tucked away in his closet, or concealed beneath his bed. The beautiful omega was spread out naked across the bed, like one of Benny’s most recent wet dreams made flesh: legs splayed wide, left hand artfully tucked up behind his head, the right lazily fisted around his obviously limp penis, almost as if trying to disguise his lack of arousal by giving the appearance of having been masturbating while waiting for Benny to arrive.

It was such a stark contrast to the spike of battery acid that splashed across Benny’s senses: a sharp note of terror at Benny’s arrival that Dean was clearly hoping Benny would be too distracted by the sight of nude, ostensibly wanton omega to notice.

“Hey, there.” Even Dean’s greeting was a thin disguise, his voice forced low to cover the reedy crack fear had made in it. “Been waiting for you.”

“Clearly,” Benny replied. “Although I’m wondering what exactly’s going on here, considerin’ you been ghostin’ me for more’n a week.”

“I made a mistake.” Another slow stroke, those jade eyes black in the low light. “You’ve been real patient with me, and I shouldn’t have shut you down like that. I wanted to apologize…” A slow shift, until Dean was lying on his left side. His right leg shifted until his foot was flat on the bed and his knee crooked up, and his head tipped so that the right side of his neck was bared. “To make it up to you.”

Almost mesmerized by the show Dean was putting on, Benny closed the distance to the bed with every appearance of being entranced. He could hear the way Dean’s breath shallowed despite the fact that the omega’s seductive expression never wavered, caught the blast of terror in Dean’s scent as Benny sat down on the edge of the bed beside him. His left hand lifted, reaching up to gently caress the side of Dean’s face; those eyes shuttered closed as air stuttered in Dean’s throat and his body went taut, bracing as if for impact.

“I’ll call you an Uber,” Benny told him softly. Dean’s eyes flew open in shock as Benny stood back up, and he could hear the omega scrambling in his wake as he walked into the living room of his apartment.

“Wait… wait, Benny, what the Hell?” Dean couldn’t believe his eyes as he reached the door of the bedroom and saw Benny sitting on the couch with cell phone in hand, obviously searching the Internet for the local Uber phone number.

“I could ask the same of you.” Pausing, Benny looked up from his phone to meet Dean’s eyes. “I have never once, in the entire time we’ve known each other, played games with you like you’re playin’ tonight. That ain’t ever been interestin’ to me… and it’s beneath you, besides.”

“I’m not playing a game!” Dean protested. “I mean it, Benny: I’m here to make it up to you-”

“Like Hell you are!” Benny snapped, his temper starting to fray. “I’d still be on my daddy’s shrimpin’ boat if I was as nose-deaf as you seem to think I am, Dean. Or did you really think that I’d miss how much you stink of fear?” He watched Dean startle in response, anger curling in his chest. “And that ain’t even counting how you’re limp as a noodle and dry as chicken at a bad wedding. You’re gorgeous, cher, but I’d have to be dead to not notice how much you don’t want me. Now I think you’d best get dressed.”

Panic clawed at Dean’s throat as Benny’s attention returned to his phone, his right index finger touching the screen twice before he held it up to his ear. This was going all wrong… he’d miscalculated somehow and it was going pear-shaped and…

Benny jerked back as Dean suddenly landed in his lap, the phone yanked from his hand and thumbed off as Dean’s right hand threaded up into his hair and Dean’s mouth slanted desperately across his own.

The shock went through Benny like a thunderclap. For one hot, unguarded moment, he returned Dean’s artless fervor with his own, hands coming up to splay across Dean’s back as he took over the kiss, hunger suppressed for weeks roaring to life in his veins. Without even realizing what he was doing, he wrapped Dean in tight and shifted, rolling them until Dean was on his back on the couch, his legs wrapped around Benny’s waist as Benny devoured his mouth and ground their hips together.

A whimper, somewhere in the back of Dean’s throat, accompanied by more sharp, fearful pheromones exploding from Dean’s scent points. It took everything Benny had to tear himself away and sit up, desperate to regain control over the impulses that hungered to ravage the picture of wanton bereft temptation the omega made beside him. “Dean…”

“Please.” It was a broken sound, wet with tears, and Benny couldn’t wrap his mind around the contradictions Dean kept presenting just now. “Please, Benny; it’s okay. You can have me; I promise I’m not playing a game.”

“Dean, what the Hell-”

The omega scrambled up, trying to once again straddle Benny’s lap and only barely held off by the way Benny’s hands came up to brace at his shoulders. “I wasn’t sure I could do it again; that’s all. I’m sorry, alpha, really; you’ve been so good to me. I promise I’ll be good while you fuck me and I know that’s what it’ll take to keep you interested, so-”

A kiss muffled the rest of the desperate tirade. Benny let Dean wrap around him again, cradling the omega more gently as he forced his own desires into the background. He could taste the saline as his lips shifted to kiss Dean’s tears away, the quiet whines that Dean was making in the back of his throat breaking Benny’s heart.

“That’s not true,” he told Dean softly. Dean’s eyes opened to stare down into his as he gently stroked Dean’s face and hair, confusion as naked as he was in those bright green eyes. “That’s not the only way you keep me interested, honey… and I think you getting all worked up thinkin’ it is might be something we need to talk about… don’t you?”

A long, shaky, silent moment. Dean’s lips drew together in a tight line as he searched Benny’s dark eyes for something. What, the alpha didn’t know, but when Dean gave a short nod of agreement, Benny hoped it was because he’d found it.

Slowly, Benny guided Dean off his lap and stood, scooping his phone from the floor. He heard Dean move into the bedroom as Benny stepped into his small, private kitchen to fetch a pitcher of iced tea and two glasses; by the time he’d returned with the drinks on a tray, Dean was back, now clad in boxers and a tee shirt. His jeans were now folded neatly on the recliner, his socks and boots placed on top of them. The omega was almost folded up into himself on the couch, accepting a glass of tea from Benny with shaking fingers. “Thanks.”

“Course, darlin’.” Benny offered Dean a smile as he settled onto the couch beside him, giving the omega just enough space to feel safe, not smothered or abandoned. “Now… why don’t you start at the beginning, okay? Tell me what’s going on.”

A deep swallow of his tea, with his eyes closed. Another. When Dean’s eyes opened, his expression was so guarded, it bordered on detached. “You’re the second person I’ve ever dated. My first relationship… I was sixteen… it lasted exactly three dates before he raped me.”

It was to Dean’s credit that, despite how much anxiety he was still putting off, the flash of red in Benny’s eyes and the snarl that instinctively rolled in his throat didn’t set the omega whining in submission to the furious alpha. “He was the star quarterback of the football team; most popular alpha in school. Bright, piercing blue eyes and dark hair and stubborn jaw. He was the perfect gentleman from the moment we met; even more so for the first couple dates we went on. And I’ve never fit the normal omega type, so when he asked me out, it was like something out of a movie.

“But then on our third date, we went parking after dinner. We were in his car, and it started out okay, you know? And it was just one little thing after another, like laying my seat back so he could get on top of me… getting into my pants and then talking me into taking them off so he could give me a hand job. He actually got me pretty worked up; I was pretty close to getting off… but then he…”

Benny bit back another snarl as Dean broke off, watching his omega struggle with the words. It was all he could do to keep from telling Dean that he didn’t need to say anything more; when his omega so clearly needed to make a clean breast of it in his own words, Benny wasn’t going to do anything but let him.

“I wasn’t on birth control. I’d never done anything before that night with anyone and I hadn’t even thought about him wanting more so fast, let alone that he’d… so I wasn’t on birth control, because I wasn’t prepared, and he wasn’t wearing an alpha condom… and he knotted me. Made fun of me for ‘giving it up’ on the third date, like I hadn’t begged him to stop. And then when his knot went down, he just started right back up… knotted me a second time. I thought it might be over when somebody tapped on the window around the time his second knot finally went down, but…” His eyes shuttered as he finished what was left in his glass, his hand shaking. They stayed half-closed, his face turning away from Benny’s as if he couldn’t look at the alpha any longer and still keep talking. “It was his father. One of the local sheriffs. But he wasn’t there to arrest Castiel or even to break it up like it was consensual. He’d known Castiel was gonna bring me there… and he got in the car…”

Glass shattered against the far wall. Dean’s eyes closed as he flinched, but Benny otherwise didn’t move. His breath was heaving in his chest as if he’d run a mile, fury chasing through his blood and making him want to tear out someone’s throat with his teeth. “That son of a bitch…”

“They took turns with me,” Dean went on, pushing the words out as best he could. “It’d been late by the time we’d gotten there as it was… maybe around nine… and Castiel had already been knotting me for an hour or so before his dad showed up… it was close to one in the morning by the time a call came across the radio in the cruiser, and Sheriff Novak pulled out before his knot was even fully deflated and told Castiel to take me home.

“We got back to my house and… Castiel, he… he and his dad had been talking all night about claiming me… getting off on how nobody would know which of them knocked me up because of how much they looked alike… but neither of them bit me. Why, I still don’t know. But when Castiel dropped me off, he said something that just… I don’t know… something just kinda unlocked, and then as soon as his car was outta sight, I ducked into the house, grabbed my dad’s keys and took off.

“I remember thinking that I couldn’t go to the local hospital in Lawrence. I needed to go where they didn’t know me, or them, or anyone. So I drove out to the closest hospital in Kansas City and went into the E.R.

“Things kinda went fuzzy for a while after that.” It took a moment for Dean’s hands to steady enough to pour himself another glass of tea; he was glad that Benny didn’t offer to do it for him. The alpha’s rage was radiating like a reactor about to melt down, and Dean wouldn’t be able to finish this if Benny didn’t stay right where he was. “I remember telling them I’d been raped. I know they did a rape kit, but I don’t remember them doing it. I barely remember talking to the police officer that showed up in the trauma room, beyond that she was a female beta. I kinda disconnected for a while… I think they might’ve given me something to help, though, because the next thing I really remember is being in an actual room, with my mom sitting by my bed looking like she’d been crying.

“They actually kept me for a couple weeks.” Dean drank deeply, refilled his glass again. “They were pretty sure at least two would’ve taken, considering how many knots I took in those four hours and how nuts my hormone shifts were. Maybe more, if I’d waited. I didn’t… they offered RU-486-Omega and I said yes. After they were sure it’d worked, they kept me for observation for a few more days to make sure… well… just in case of… anything.”

Benny’s imagination supplied a number of scenarios in the blank space of that statement. He could well imagine what they were afraid an underage rape victim that had just needed to make the decision to ensure that his rapists’ attempts to impregnate him were thwarted might do once the dust had finally settled.

“Anyway, by the time it was all over, I didn’t want to even think about going back to that school. Mom got everything arranged by the time I was ready to be discharged: I could pick between staying with my Uncle Bobby and Aunt Karen in Sioux Falls or my Uncle Bill and Aunt Ellen outside Broken Bow. I picked Sioux Falls and finished high school there; Uncle Bobby has a salvage yard, and what my dad hadn’t gotten to teach me about cars, I learned helping my uncle either fix up or pick-and-pull the wrecks on the weekends.”

“What about the alphas?” Benny asked, his voice surprisingly level for how incandescently furious he was. “What happened to them?”

“They collected plenty of evidence at the hospital since I was too out of it to fight them on documenting any of it,” Dean answered. “Too much for some jackass defense attorney to claim I was really just some knot slut that didn’t want to get in trouble with my parents and cried rape. Especially once Dad called in the omega rights groups and the pressure got turned up enough for them to run DNA on the rape kit. They both did time. There was a civil suit, too: the damages paid my way through college and a Master’s.”

Slowly, being careful to not spook the omega, Benny stood and went to the closet where he kept his broom and dustpan. By the time he’d finished cleaning up the shattered remnants of the glass he’d hurled across the room, his anger had settled and drained away, leaving only a throbbing ache in his chest. Sadness for Dean, that he’d gone through something so horrific at such a young age. Satisfaction that, for once in this miserable world, sexual predators had gotten what was coming to them.

A tangled knot of questions. Did Dean really want him? Did he remind Dean in any way of the charming, treacherous alpha that had stolen his innocence? With the air cleared between them, was there any way to salvage the beautiful something that had been building in the past few weeks?

He turned at the sound of clothing rustling. Dean was fastening his jeans, clearly preparing to leave. “Cher, wait.”

“I should go,” Dean replied. “You know the truth now. You don’t want an omega that has a panic attack at the idea of being alone with an alpha after dark, let alone over the idea of giving you a chance to prove that you’d be nothing like the ones that did this to me.”

Without thinking, Benny closed the distance between them, his hands up in a gesture of non-aggression until he was close enough to cup Dean’s face between them and angle the omega’s mouth to receive another tender kiss. Dean actually whimpered as their mouths slotted together, his hands coming up to wrap around Benny’s biceps, fingers knotting into the fabric of Benny’s tee-shirt as he kissed the alpha back.

By the time the kiss ended, Benny was looking down into jade green eyes that glimmered at the edge of tears. His thumbs smoothed across the arches of those impossible cheekbones, a soft, reassuring smile crossing his mouth. “You can leave if you want, cher… but I’m feelin’ a powerful need for some beignets an’ cocoa just at the moment, and I was hopin’ maybe you’d join me.”

Almost involuntarily, Dean barked out a surprised laugh in response. Benny let his hands drop away from Dean’s face, that gentle smile widening just a fraction, and Dean couldn’t help responding with a wobbly, uncertain one of his own. “Sounds good to me.”


	4. Chapter 4

**~~~***~~~**

“So let me get this right.” Charlie flopped down onto one of Dean’s bean bag chairs and grabbed a slice of Hawaiian pizza from the box between them. “You went over there, snuck upstairs, got naked and laid there waiting in his bedroom…”

“Yup.”

“Having every intention of letting him fuck you stupid and trying to play the whole ‘take me; I’m yours, mighty alpha’ routine…”

Dean threw an irritated grimace at his beta neighbor. “Not like that.”

“Exactly like that,” Charlie countered. “And he not only called your bluff, but somehow got you to communicate like a human being? With words and everything?”

“You’re so annoying,” Dean groused.

“I’m the little sister you never wanted, I know.” Charlie tore a bite from her slice of pizza, chewing and swallowing quickly. “But you guys talked… like, all night… and he didn’t try to talk you into going back upstairs for a little sum’n-sum’n to burn off all the excess emotional energy?”

“Pretty much.” Dean folded his cheese-stuffed crust in half, dunked it in the onion dip and crammed it into his mouth whole. He hoped that having a mouthful to chew might stave off Charlie’s questions for a few minutes. That, and him queueing up Mario Kart on his PlayStation.

Charlie grabbed a controller as he did, though her ability to multitask wasn’t thrown off by the blatant attempt at distraction. “Why didn’t you talk to me before you did it? I could’ve told you that Benny wasn’t the kind of guy that’d just pounce on a naked omega and not ask questions.”

“Because life isn’t a video game,” Dean snarked back. “Which means that getting to level four friendship doesn’t just automatically unlock my tragic backstory.”

“So what if you don’t wanna tell me all the details?” Charlie challenged with a shrug. “You and I bonded over pop culture and avoiding telling people about how badly our lives sucked before we came here. I don’t need to know what happened to know it fucked with your entire sexual identity, which was easy for you to ignore until Benny came along with his Creole charm and his big, warm, huggable, teddy bear physique and that drawl that you can’t help imagining what it would sound like in the bedroom.”

“You and Abaddon are both goddamned know-it-alls,” Dean groused. “You don’t actually know anything.”

“We don’t have to,” Charlie countered. “When you’re not just someone that grew up… when you’ve had to survive something… it makes it easier to tell when other people are survivors, too. The details don’t matter unless you want to share them. We understand, because we had to survive, too. We know what it does to your head.” She gave him a sideways, sympathetic glance. “And your heart.”

Things fell silent for a while, save the sound effects for the game. The pizza slowly disappeared, and the beer in Dean’s refrigerator almost gone with it, before Dean spoke again. “I wanna let him,” he told Charlie quietly.

“See, now that’s your problem right there,” Charlie replied, knocking back the last few sips from her beer bottle. “You can’t just want to ‘let him’ because you know he wants you. You’ve gotta want him back.”

“I’m not sure I know how to.” Dean set his controller aside and let his head loll back, staring up at the ceiling and feeling lost. “I was only sixteen, Charlie. I barely had the shape of what wanting was before they…” He trailed off, knowing her eyes were on him, huge and full of hurt for his sake. Knowing he didn’t need to say more for her to figure it out. “The two of them took something from me that night… and up until a month ago, if anybody would’ve tried to tell me I’d meet someone that’d make me even consider wanting it back, I’d’ve punched ‘em in the mouth. But then Benny comes along and…” He sighed, then levered himself up to go get another round of beers from the kitchen.

Charlie followed him, leaning in the doorway and crossing her arms. “So maybe you start small,” she offered, taking a bottle from his hand as he approached her. “You felt safe enough with him down in his cafe, right?”

“I’d just dropped some pretty big bombs on him before that,” Dean reminded her. “Not too many alphas wouldn’t know that trying to get laid in the wake of all that’d be a tough needle to thread.”

“Don’t let how scared you are of this make you deliberately obtuse,” Charlie scolded. “You knew before you went over there that he wasn’t like the ones that hurt you. You wouldn’t have even considered it otherwise. You just expected that he’d take you up on it before you could chicken out.”

Much as he wanted to argue the point, Charlie had an irritating propensity to read him far too well. “You gonna tell me what else I know? Or get around to the advice you’re dyin’ to give me?”

“You felt safe there,” Charlie told him. Her large, dark eyes were steady as they held his own, giving him nowhere to hide. “So use that. Meet him halfway and start going to the cafe around closing time. He’s a chef; his restaurant, and especially his kitchen, are probably just as intimate to him as his bedroom, but there are multiple exits and fire alarms and ways for you to fight back if you’re not feeling safe. It’s not neutral territory, but that’s also not what you need. You need a way to build a comfort zone around him, and I’d say the cafe after hours is as good a place as any to try and do that.”

Cracking his beer, Dean took a long drink before answering. “You gonna kick my ass at Final Fantasy or what?”

It was as good a confirmation that Dean was going to think about her suggestion as she could’ve asked for. “Bring it, Winchester.”

**~~~**

For three days after their night-long talk, Dean didn’t show up for lunch at the cafe. Benny couldn’t blame Dean for needing space, not after how vulnerable the normally-guarded omega had made himself. But it didn’t help the keen bite of disappointment. The vague shape of something in his chest, hollow and bereft, stemming from an instinctive need to know that his omega felt safer with him than without.

On the third night, while Benny was up to his elbows in orders for crabes mous amandine, one of his waitresses posted a ticket for the alligator Andouille gumbo that stopped him cold for a full ten seconds.

Above the normal shorthand scrawl and next to the table number, in Lenore’s much neater handwriting, was a single word: “Dean”.

The rest of his staff noticed the way his smile curled, broad and pleased. The way his shoulders were more relaxed as he worked for the rest of the night. The way his face did something complicated and clearly besotted when an order for beignets and coffee came in from Dean’s table after his dinner dishes were bussed away.

He emerged from the kitchen as the final tables were being served dessert and settling their checks to find Dean still there, sipping another round of coffee and glancing up at Benny over the rim of the cup with an unmistakable glimmer in his eyes. “Evenin’, cher.”

“Hi.” Dean offered a slightly shaky smile as Benny sat down. “I, uh… I wanted to come down and… well, apologize, I guess. For the way I acted the other night. And for shutting you down like I did a couple weeks ago.”

“You don’t need to,” Benny replied, his eyes sweeping around the room to ensure that his staff was working instead of pretending to do so as a way to cover being nosy parkers about his love life. “Knowing what I know now, it’s not like I can blame you for reacting the way you did.”

“Except I do need to.” Slowly, Dean slid a hand across the table, palm up in invitation. Benny took it readily enough, his palm warm and callused from long years’ work with kitchen implements. Hands that had never touched him in any harmful way. “Just because there was a reason behind everything that you understand doesn’t make it okay that I did it. You didn’t deserve that.”

“Well, even if that’s true, there ain’t much I wouldn’t forgive you, cher.” Benny turned their hands over, then lifted Dean’s to his lips to brush a gentle kiss across his knuckles. “So… where do we go from here?”

“That’s kinda up to you,” Dean answered. With a blush hidden by the low light, he pulled Benny’s hand across the space between them and whisper a kiss of his own over the back. The alpha’s eyes fluttered for half a moment in response, a sound bitten off in the back of his throat. “I, uh… was kinda hoping we could spend some time together after you close the place down… talk for a while?”

The answering smile on Benny’s face was bright enough to light the entire dining room. “I’d like nothing better.”

**~~~**

It wasn’t a new beginning, and yet it was. Instead of lunch dates in Dean’s office at the museum, or matinee movies and art exhibits, Dean came to the cafe every night. Sometimes for dinner, sometimes just before closing time when he could sit at the bar with a virgin cocktail until Benny was free. If the employees wondered, they never said anything openly. Only smiled indulgently at the sight of their boss’ face lighting up even after the most disastrous of days and began including Dean in their end-of-day rituals.

They were private things, these moments when it was just the staff on their own after a long day. Benny laughing easily with them as he sat back with a glass of Verite, a red wine from a friend’s vineyard back in Louisiana. All of them talking and relaxing and eating together, regardless of designation, comfortable as old shoes.

It reinforced that it was a safe space, just as Charlie had predicted, and Dean found himself more and more reluctant to leave as the weeks went by. They talked for hours about anything and everything: Dean’s career at the Academy of Art University Automotive Museum; Benny’s family, including a grandmother who was rumored to have been a witch.

The Impala that had belonged to Dean’s father, the one that had carried him to the hospital where he’d been treated after his rapists had finally let him go. How it had become a present upon completion of his Masters’ degree, a tacit symbol both of his freedom from what had been done to him and a link to the family that had supported him through the aftermath.

Benny’s own struggles to trust after Andrea’s betrayal with an alpha that Benny refused to call anything but “the old man”. To let himself be part of the community that a cafe needed to be in order to succeed, especially when trying to open a Creole cafe on the west coast. To tweak the recipes she’d stolen without compromising them, because to discard them and start over would be to concede defeat, and leaving the delta to start his business somewhere she wasn’t had been enough of a concession in Benny’s mind.

Dean had given a growl of his own at that. “You could’ve stayed,” he told Benny as they lingered on barstools, drinks long empty, anger on Benny’s behalf evident in his tone. “Let her try to explain why she was cooking your food and not giving you any of the credit… or at least a share of the money she was making off your hard work.”

“Tough to prove whose they were, since I developed ‘em when I was with her,” Benny replied. “Besides,” he added with a gentle smile, “if I hadn’t moved here to avoid an ugly rumor-fight that would’ve tanked my cafe before I could start it, I never would’ve met you.”

A flush of warmth went through Dean at that, his breath going shallow for reasons he couldn’t name. After all, Benny was only smiling at him. Close and intimate and tender, but just smiling. Not even touching.

And then Dean was closing the space between them. Benny’s mouth was under his, parted in surprise at the contact. It made Dean somehow bolder, hungrier. Hungry enough to shift from his barstool and into Benny’s lap, straddling the alpha as his hands caught the bigger man’s face. Those wide, warm hands were on him, steadying at first, one at the bow of his spine and the other on his left thigh. Somewhere in the back of Benny’s throat, a groan rolled like a growl, the fingers wrapped around Dean’s thigh flexing ever so slightly. Otherwise, the alpha beneath him was vibrating with the need to be still. To keep himself in check, and let Dean have what he wanted without pressing for more.

And Dean could feel it, there against his hips. Thick and rigid, straining for him even through four layers of clothing, indisputable evidence that the alpha definitely wanted more. And yet he held himself back, letting Dean control the pace. Another alpha would’ve had Dean naked on his back and be pounding him through the floor by now.

Heat pooled in his gut, making his hips roll and grind against the ridge of his alpha’s need. His tongue licked Benny’s answering growl from his mouth, lips curving into a breathless, giddy smile as Benny’s sharp teeth nipped at them. “Cher…”

“You taste good,” Dean murmured. The joy of it was heady in his veins. Benny was holding back. Would hold back all night. Was warning Dean that his control was thin, in case Dean wanted to stop before things went too far.

It made Dean not want to stop. It made Dean _want_.

Benny growled again, a groan laced underneath it as his hands shifted. Firm, steady pressure that backed Dean off and held him there, the omega’s mouth half a breath away from his own. “Don’t you do nothin’ on my account, cher,” Benny warned. “You’re not sure, or you wanna stop-”

“I’ll tell you,” Dean promised. “I know you’ll listen if I say no.” A devious, impish smile curled across his face. “But I haven’t hit my limit of yes yet… and something tells me you haven’t, either.”

The barest flicker of red in those eyes, almost like the flash of a spark. “So if I asked you to come upstairs with me…”

“I’d say that depends,” Dean answered.

Benny’s tongue flicked out, wetting his lips. “On?”

“You checking the chivalry at the door.”

The only response the alpha could find to such a provocative statement was to growl “deal” as he stood up. Dean pushed off against him, landing on his feet a few feet away, and threw a sly grin at Benny before darting through the kitchen and up the hidden stair to Benny’s apartment, nimble as a cat.

He was caught from behind halfway across the living room by a solid wall of alpha, barely aware of the door clicking shut behind them as he turned into the motion and wrapped his arms around Benny’s neck. Kiss after devouring kiss, hands scrabbling for purchase in Benny’s undershirt and yanking it free, until they were once again in Benny’s bedroom and Dean was sprawling across the bed with Benny staring down at him with hunger in his eyes and Dean’s own tee shirt in his right hand.

Other than the last time he’d been in this room, which had been an absolutely disastrous sham and therefore didn’t count, he’d never been shirtless with an alpha before. Not even that night. Castiel hadn’t been interested in the still-developing muscles of Dean’s sixteen-year-old self; Sheriff Novak even less so. He’d been with no once since, not even for heavy make-out sessions, unable to even trust a beta at first. And as time went by, abstinence and mistrust became old habits, easy to keep and difficult to imagine not practicing for the rest of his life.

But Benny’s eyes were lingering hotly over every line and dip of his muscles, denser and more pronounced than most omegas liked to be. Strong enough that he could fight his way free of any alpha’s grip, enhancing his broad shoulders and chest, emphasizing that this wasn’t an omega that would be dominated easily. Most alphas didn’t even bother to try. Then again, Benny wasn’t like most alphas.

Thoughts of other alphas scattered as Benny let Dean’s shirt slither from his fingers, forgotten by them both as he slid into the bed beside him. Dean could feel himself getting slick as those hands found his skin, their touch reverent as they skimmed along his sides. Benny’s whole body was warm and solid, making Dean’s limbs twitch for want of wrapping around it, tangling and holding tight so that Benny could keep him safe.

And yet there was something in the way Benny touched him that held him still, that same safety radiating through those callused palms and nimble fingers and the kisses that trailed in their wake as they made their way along the planes of Dean’s chest and abdomen. Slow and sweet, barely grazing the waistband of his jeans before finding paths back up to his pecs, his throat, his heart. Dean was hard… harder than he’d been in years… aching and soaking through his clothes and he wanted… oh, he wanted…

His own hands found Benny’s as they skirted past his waistband again, stilling them and holding them above the fly. “Please, Benny…”

“Cher…”

The rush of want that flooded off Dean’s skin at that left them both dizzy. “Talk to me,” Dean asked. “He didn’t speak anything but English… talk to me…”

A warm laugh, and then Benny was kissing that space below his ear, French murmurs sliding over his senses as those fingers eased his jeans open, urged them down when Dean struggled against their clammy restriction. It was Dean’s own hands that almost irritably shoved his boxers off his hips and into Benny’s waiting grip, the clothing disappearing off the side of the bed in a heap in Benny’s eagerness to get his hands back on the omega beneath him, fingers touching down on the tender pudge of Dean’s stomach light as butterflies.

And then those fingers kept moving. Exploring the cuts of Dean’s hips, French mingling with kisses along the V but staying well away from flesh that had barely been interested in Dean’s own touch in the past decade, let alone anyone else’s. Tracing powerful thighs, finding the ticklish spots behind Dean’s knees but careful to avoid urging them apart further than they wanted to fall on their own. Learning Dean’s body for its own sake, and not for the relief it could offer his own needs. And all the while, phrases Dean only half understood rumbled along Dean’s vibrating skin and found his ears, washing over his senses and grounding him in the now.

Benny was probably saying things that Castiel had said. Dean couldn’t imagine much variety in what alphas might whisper to their omega lovers in the dark. But the unknown language, half-translated in his mind from its similarity to Spanish, reminded Dean that it wasn’t a Novak speaking. Neither Castiel nor his father was in the room, waiting to pounce. It was only he and Benny here, and Benny was lavishing him with touch and letting his pheromones flood into the room. The scent of jambalaya and cypress trees and fertile delta. It was safe here. It was safe to spread his legs wider and arch his hips off the bed. To let Benny catch the scent of how wet he was. How badly his body wanted the nearby alpha to claim it, and sweep away the memories of those that hadn’t cared if their use had been wanted or not.

It wasn’t until those hands were framing his hips, guiding Dean to roll onto his stomach, that a shock of cold ran through the haze of want that Benny’s ministrations had draped over his senses. His muscles tensed and the motion halted before Dean’s mouth had finished forming Benny’s name; half-rolled, Dean opened his eyes and twisted so he could see Benny’s face.

The alpha was still half-clothed, pants still fastened and strained around his erection. He hadn’t let go of Dean yet, but his grip had relaxed to barely more than a caress, and the heat in his expression was banked by concern as he met Dean’s eyes. “Is this not okay?”

“Depends on what ‘this’ is,” Dean hedged. He wasn’t sure he could let the alpha mount him that way. Never mind that the Novaks had only fucked him in missionary; they’d only done that so they could watch him cry while he was knotted. Not seeing Benny’s face while they… Dean wasn’t sure he could do that. Not yet. At least, not the first time. He needed to know it wasn’t them… needed to be sure… 

“Wanted to taste you, cher.” He let go of Dean’s hips and shifted until he was beneath Dean, flat on his back and drawing Dean down for another kiss. “I been dreamin’ ‘bout rimmin’ you for ages… but I don’t have to, if that’s not okay.”

The thought sent heat tripping back through Dean’s veins, a pulse of slick leaking anew down his thighs. He only had the barest idea of what it was Benny wanted to do, but the hunger in his voice made Dean want to try… he needed to know it was still Benny but he also _wanted_... there had to be a way…

A blush burned its way up his face and neck, refusing to die down as Dean kissed Benny again, then shifted back and away. A garbled, half-formed question died in Benny’s throat as Dean turned and slid one leg across Benny’s chest, straddling the alpha while putting his back to him.

Presenting, but in a way that let Dean clamp his hands around Benny’s ankles in the name of steadying himself, and know he wasn’t about to be mounted without warning. That let him be sure it was Benny, and not have to be afraid.

The sound that came from Benny’s throat when he realized what Dean was doing, what Dean was giving him permission to do without having to say the words, was like a man dying.

A little shifting, so that Benny’s neck was supported, and his fingers were pressing Dean’s cheeks a little further apart. Dean was barely aware that he was breathing too shallow, not sure what to expect but refusing to back down despite his fear that he’d freak out and chicken out because no matter what he wanted it still might be too soon-

Benny’s tongue made contact: a long, slow drag of slick muscle over slicker skin. Dean couldn’t control the shout that left him, almost high enough to be a squeal, but the huff of Benny’s answering chuckle curled over the twitching, flexing rosebud and sent tingling flashes up Dean’s spine.

Again. And again. Tracing the edge where his slick was leaking, soaking Benny’s chin and jaw as he kissed and licked, teasing the quivering ring until it let him in, fraction by fraction. Working his way inside until he was able to seal his mouth against Dean’s rim and delve deep.

Dean’s entire body was alight, a mass of raw sensation. He could feel it everywhere: running under his skin and along every nerve in his throbbing, neglected erection; up the length of his spine and deep in his womb. Pulling. Tightening. Alive like he’d never felt before…

It crested and broke, a wave crashing over Dean’s senses unlike anything the few cursory pulls he gave his morning erections had ever produced. He was vaguely aware of shouting Benny’s name, of the way slick and semen seemed to gush from his body, his limbs growing heavy and woolen and shaking from the force of it. And all the while, Benny was stroking his hip, pressing tiny kittenish kisses to his soaking-wet entrance and murmuring in French that Dean could only barely hear.

As fast as it had hit, the effects faded slowly. Dean felt himself sway, and then Benny was helping him over, nestling him into the sheets and stroking his hair. When his eyes finally opened, the alpha’s were still faintly ruddy, his face coated in Dean’s slick and his chest hair painted with white stripes.

He was a mess. Dean had made him that way. The scent of Dean’s orgasm was thick in the air, but not thick enough to disguise Benny’s rut markers. He was still hard in his pants. Those pants were still closed, the dark fabric hiding what had to be an ever-expanding stain as Benny’s untouched need leaked steadily within its confines.

Before Dean could think about how to react, Benny offered a tender smile and brushed gentle fingers through his hair. “I’m gonna go clean up, cher. You rest a bit; you can have the shower when I’m done and I’ll change the sheets while you’re in there.” A noise that might have been a protest fell away unformed as Benny rose from the bed and disappeared into the en-suite. 

A handful of uncountable heartbeats. Dean could hear the sound of water running in the sink; of Benny brushing his teeth and rinsing his mouth out. The shower starting, and the unmistakable groan that rolled from Benny’s throat. He’d finally taken off his pants and boxer briefs in preparation to enter the shower, which had released the pressure on his erection.

 _The wrong kind of pressure_ , came the unbidden thought. _Not the kind he wants. Not the kind that would feel even half as good as he just did for me._

Thinking too much wouldn’t help. Thinking about it would give him time to talk himself out of it. Dean didn’t want to think. For the first time in a decade, he just simply wanted.

The expression on Benny’s face as Dean pulled the curtain aside, all round-eyed surprise and defenseless uncertainty, was enough to make Dean smirk even as he stepped into the shower and yanked the curtain back into place. One hand wrapped up around Benny’s neck while the other chased Benny’s hands away from the straining, thick arousal that he’d been starting to attend. “My turn,” he half-growled.

His name was lost between their lips as his hand made contact, wrapping with a gentle, deliberate grip just above the knot that was trying to swell into life. Castiel hadn’t wanted him; had only wanted a sure thing, an easy victim. A warm place in which to rut until he got off. Benny wanted _him_. Wanted him so much that he would hold himself back even now, when he was all but dying for want of what Dean was still working up the courage to offer.

There was a faint scent of body wash; Benny had cleaned up fast, trying to save enough hot water for Dean’s own needs and have enough time to get himself off without Dean feeling beholden to present to the alpha again. Dean chased the hints of it with his lips, his tongue, tracing the paths that the water made through the mat of Benny’s chest hair, all the while holding Benny’s erection in that firm, unmoving grip. Keeping him suspended just on the edge of getting off until Dean could finally push Benny back against the wall of the shower stall and drop to his knees.

Benny’s hand was on his shoulder in a heartbeat, the other bracing against the wall to steady himself. “Cher-”

“You hit your limit of yes?” Dean asked. The light sarcasm in his voice belied the viridian flames in his eyes as they lifted to meet Benny’s shocked gaze. “Because I still haven’t… but like you said, I don’t have to if it’s not okay.”

A wall crumbled. Dean watched it happen as the last of Benny’s restraint finally gave way, and then his hand was no longer on Dean’s shoulder but in his hair and his eyes were just as bright as Dean’s. “Please, cher…”

Dean’s breath caught in his throat for the barest second at the sheer _need_ in Benny’s voice. And then he was bending his head, his tongue flicking out to taste the leaking slit before his mouth wrapped around the flared, sensitive head. There was a thunk as Benny’s head hit the wall, punctuated by the long, drawn-out groan that must’ve dragged itself out of Benny’s diaphragm, and Dean found himself blurting slick again at the sound of it. At the taste of earthy heat on his tongue and the way the rocketing pulse in the thick vein throbbed in response to every shift of his lips.

It wasn’t easy to find the right balance. Dean had never experienced fellatio before, giving or receiving, and Benny had been pent up for too long to talk him through the tricky parts. It wasn’t long before he was pushing Dean back and off him with a warning growl, his knot swelling to full pressure in the instant before Dean tumbled backwards onto his backside on the floor of the shower and Benny was crying out his own long-denied release under the now-lukewarm spray.

Dean could only lie there, stunned and aroused, as the water from the shower head and the pulsing stream of Benny’s seed commingled across his skin. Benny didn’t even seem to realize it was happening at first, the lack of snug heat around his knot depriving it of the stimulation needed to stay inflated for very long. Five, maybe ten minutes passed before Benny was sagging limply against the wall for support, his eyes still closed against the way it had broken over him and his knot went down, the stream of viscous white ebbing and blurting and finally stopping altogether.

They didn’t open again until he sensed Dean standing up. Watched with something possessive and abashed in equal measure as Dean used the body wash and sponge to clean Benny’s orgasm from his skin, green eyes holding blue with something like an open challenge behind them.

Benny’s mouth opened to apologize, and Dean’s mouth cut him off, stealing the words with an open kiss that made Benny’s spent manhood twitch towards second life. “That,” Dean murmured against his mouth, “was a really bad blowjob I just gave you.”

The alpha couldn’t help the laugh that chuffed out of him as he met Dean’s eyes again. “Nobody’s good at it the first time they try.”

“And you still got off like a rocket.” Dean’s expression turned a combination of sly and smug that had Benny’s entire body clamoring to respond. “Imagine what it’ll be like when I get good at it.”

It was Dean’s turn to end up against the wall of the shower, Benny’s hand turning off the increasingly-colder water as he devoured Dean’s mouth. “You’re gonna be the death of me, cher… they don’t call it ‘le petit mort’ for nothin’, you know.”

Dean grinned into the kiss. “Would you wanna go any other way?”

Both hands came up to frame Dean’s face, the kiss turning more consuming and more tender in equal measure. “Not on your life, cher.”


	5. Chapter 5

**~~~***~~~**

The next morning, Dean woke slowly to the sound of nothing at all. No birdsong or alarm clocks or traffic or people in neighboring apartments bumping around. Just quiet, and the steady rhythm of the alpha curled around his back breathing deeply while he slept.

They were both still naked, having changed the bed after their shower and fallen asleep in each other’s arms. The morning erection Benny sported was pressed firmly against Dean’s cleft, but it didn’t make him afraid. He was still somewhat slick from the night before, and growing slicker as he registered the way Benny felt against him. At the thought of maybe…

Maybe…

Another soft pulse of want. The scent had the alpha behind him stirring. Dean couldn’t help the tiny wriggle of his hips, savoring the way it made that firm heat ride against him, slipping between his cheeks and catching on his rim…

A growl from Benny in response to Dean’s involuntary gasp. In a heartbeat, that delicious pressure was gone as Benny reared back and spun Dean over so they were facing each other in the bed. Benny’s eyes were glowing already, having woken to the scent of wanton omega and the beckoning heat teasing at him. “Cher…”

“Alpha…”. Dean’s arms were wrapped around Benny’s neck another heartbeat later, his whole body wrapping around Benny’s as their mouths met. Benny had always promised amazing breakfasts, but that wasn’t what Dean was hungry for just now.

He needed Benny. Now. This minute. While his body’s fear of penetration and knotting was relegated to a quiet corner of his mind, and while it was still fresh and clear that Benny would rather die than hurt him the way the Novaks had.

Courage was a fragile thing, Dean had found; too easily broken by time to think beyond the desired action. He could think about the implications later. Right now, he just needed to be brave.

The sheets tangled around them and were kicked away as they rolled together: devouring kisses muffling moans as hands groped and grappled and squeezed. Dean’s legs wrapped up around Benny’s waist, thighs flexing with the promise of what lay between them and making Benny roar deep in his throat, the vibration searing through Dean’s bones until he was biting the underside of Benny’s jaw and his weight was rolling them again.

They ended with Dean on his back, Benny staring down at him with strange, hungry eyes while his chest heaved. Dean used his legs to lever up, his hips tilting until the broad head wedged against his entrance.

“Cher…” It was a groan, the invitation almost too much to resist. Dean felt the way Benny’s hips rocked, pressing just a fraction into the slick rosebud of muscle before he could stop himself. “Dean…”

“Please, Benny…” Dean arched up as Benny’s hips rocked again. The head popped past his initial resistance and wedged just inside him, dragging a cry from them both. “C’mon, alpha… fuck me… please, alpha; c’mon…”

Benny groaned as he pushed in slow, kissing Dean’s face on reflex. Dean was clinging and making high, needy sounds in the back of his throat, refusing to let Benny so much as pause, his hips rocking against the steady pressure until Benny was fully seated. He could feel Dean trembling beneath and around him, bottle green eyes squeezed shut and sounds trapped in his mouth that might have been panicked if they were given full voice.

His brave omega. Fighting his own demons, refusing to give them reign over this moment. It made Benny’s heart ache and he relaxed his weight, gathering Dean into his arms and brushing kisses over his eyelids. “Cher… mon omega courageaux…”

The throbbing of ean’s pulse around him began to slow, to synchronize with his, the soft Creole inflection working as he’d hoped and helping Dean fight back, to break the hold that the memories had taken of him. “Dean… cher… open those gorgeous eyes for me…”

Those lashes fluttered, and then Benny was gazing into green eyes blown wide, glowing with lust and flashing with something even more primal, searching Benny’s face as the alpha smiled. “There you are,” he murmured. He watched Dean’s face relax, the omega’s grip uncurling from fists to rest, flat and slick from sweat against the rise of Benny’s shoulder blades.

“Benny…” A sigh of relief, mingled with the something more that had led them both here. He smiled wider at the sound, unable to resist lowering his mouth to the one that had shaped it for a slow, open kiss that Dean all but mewled into.

They lay there for long, uncounted heartbeats, Dean’s body cradled in Benny’s arms as they kissed. A body that had known only pain, now learning the shape of the alpha’s buried deep inside it, the weight becoming welcome as his slick channel was given the chance to become accustomed to the intrusion.

Slowly, experimentally, Dean’s legs shifted, his hips tilting up again and letting Benny sink that much deeper. It dragged a ragged moan from the alpha above him that sent thrills tripping through Dean’s veins, radiating to the core where they were joined. “Dean…”

“Ben…” Dean kissed him, shifting experimentally until he was riding up against Benny’s weight. The friction set a tiny cry breaking in Dean’s throat, needy and wanton. Benny made a broken sound in response, his body vibrating as he fought the urge to move, giving Dean the control. The right to say when. “I’m okay,” Dean heard himself saying. “I got it; I’m okay…”

“Dean…”

Hips tilting again, Dean watched Benny’s eyes shutter as he sank just a fraction deeper, nudging against the gate of Dean’s womb. “Come on, Benny,” he urged. “Show me what it’s s’posed to feel like.”

Benny’s eyes opened, glittering umber and crimson. Dean offered a smile, but it was lost as Benny’s hips drew back and snapped forward again, a long moan rising from his throat as his mouth fell open, his head lolling back.

Steady. Sharp. Benny’s hands braced on the mattress beneath them as he settled into a strong, pounding rhythm that matched Dean’s heartbeat and set his body aflame. There was no pain, no trace of resistance; only the thick heat riding into him, his slick easing the way even as his muscles gripped and rippled and clung to the hard length moving inside him. It was good… so good better than good it was exactly what his body had craved in the deep of the night, when his dreams had reminded him that sex was something it could want… something it could crave…

He could feel even now how Benny was holding back, letting him process when every instinct had to be telling him to rut until the omega beneath him was wailing his pleasure and begging for his knot… Dean whimpered when that realization sank in, the sound morphing into a whine when Benny stilled in response to what sounded like distress. “Cher?”

“I ain’t made of goddamned glass,” Dean snapped. He pulled Benny’s head down for a brutal kiss, teeth catching Benny’s lower lip in a sharp bite. “If I need you to stop, I’ll say so. Now quit bein’ so chivalrous and _fuck me_.”

A growl, and then those hands were on his thighs, pushing one of his legs up over Benny’s shoulders and repositioning the other. The first snap of Benny’s hips drove a cry from Dean’s throat, elongating in a moan as Benny _finally_ let go his restraint, pounding deep and no longer careful, and it was so good that Dean’s eyes rolled up into his head when he felt the crown of Benny’s knot, the swell trying to push him wider with every thrust. It made Dean desperate, his legs tightening as he tried to pull Benny deeper, the starburst building at the base of his spine and he needed… ten years of uncertainty burned to ash as Benny ground against him without thinking, and then Dean was babbling consent, pleading and swearing and begging for it…

All of a moment, he was in the air; Benny had spun them, reversing their positions so that Dean was astride him, and then he was grinding up as he pulled Dean’s hips down, the knot popping through Dean’s entrance and swelling to full bloom. The pressure crested and Dean’s back arched as he came, Benny’s hands lacing with his own to keep him from toppling over backwards as he sprayed in long arcs across Benny’s chest and stomach.

His eyes opened slowly as it subsided; Benny’s face was tense, enraptured, his breath shallow as he watched Dean’s orgasm. A dozen heartbeats went by before Dean realized that something was different.

There was no accompanying font of heat inside him. The knot was lodged deep, pulsing against the snug clutch of his inner walls, but there was no stream of alpha seed spraying up into his womb.

It shook him, a full body shudder sweeping Dean and triggering a blurting aftershock. He felt the corresponding shiver go through Benny as his pupils blew even wider, a struggle clear in every line of his body.

Every inch of the way, Benny had held himself in check, refusing to go faster than Dean was able to match. Dean hadn’t ever imagined that an alpha could restrain a knot-orgasm, especially after the way the Novaks’ had indulged themselves at his expense. And yet, even now, Benny was giving him time to process, room to breathe, waiting for Dean’s green light before accepting anything for himself.

It made Dean’s insides curl with want: a deeper, steadier pull than he’d ever felt before. He gave an experimental squeeze around the knot and thrilled to the punched-out groan that dragged up from Benny’s gut in response, using Benny’s grip to keep his balance as he began carefully rocking against the alpha’s hips. “Dean…”

“I’m on birth control,” Dean told him. “Have been for years.” Benny groaned as Dean rocked and bore down, learning how hard he could tighten before it was too much. “You’re so good to me, alpha… fighting so hard to give me what I need… ‘cept what I need right now is to feel you come… feel you painting up my insides and know it’s me that got you off, not just the ripe hole between my legs.”

“Crisse,” Benny choked out, another shudder sweeping him. “You can’t just say that, cher…”

“I can do worse than that,” Dean teased, “if that’s what it takes to make you come.” He rocked again, thighs squeezing Benny’s waist. “Come on, alpha… fill me up… wanna be leaking from you all day… lie here while you’re downstairs, all empty and smelling you between my thighs… thinking about you and playing with myself, waiting for you to come back up and fuck me full again…”

“You’ve been watchin’ some real bad porn,” Benny chuffed, the humor barely covering the strain.

Dean laughed, the sound bubbling up from the glowing space under his ribs. It made him rock again as his head tipped back, his laughter ringing in the room until he felt the shock go through the man beneath him. His eyes flicked down in time to watch Benny’s face twist in rapture as his orgasm finally hit, his seed pumping in heavy gouts up into Dean’s body.

When it eventually settled into a steady, pulsing stream, Benny’s eyes fluttered open, meeting Dean’s gaze and searching, concern etching lines around them until he saw what he needed to see. His expression smoothed after that, relaxing into lazy, smiling satisfaction. It warmed Dean to see it, and something that had been uncertain inside him throughout everything finally unclenched. “Hey, there,” he murmured.

“Hey yourself, cher.” Benny let go of Dean’s left hand, reaching up to cup Dean’s cheek. Dean leaned into the touch, and Benny shifted his legs so that Dean could lean back against his thighs, propped against his bent knees.

For a long time, they just rested there: Dean giving the occasional squeeze or shift, testing the way the knot responded, and Benny’s hands stroking with possessive tenderness over his thighs and stomach, flirting with flickering passes along the half-erect flesh between Dean’s legs. They were too far apart to kiss; Dean couldn’t fold himself down across Benny’s chest without an uncomfortable pull that made his breath go shallow. But the comfortable silence was wrapped around them like a quilt, and it wasn’t until Benny’s hips could no longer handle Dean’s quiescent weight that the spell began to lift.

“Here.” Benny helped Dean shift, every so gently turning on his knot until Dean’s back could spoon against Benny’s chest. He got them down onto their sides and the blankets tugged back up around them, nestling Dean into a bower of warmth and safety before curling his omega into his arms and fitting his hips as tightly against Dean’s as he could, making sure Dean would be comfortable with the way the knot was seated for however much longer it would stay inflated. “You all right?”

Dean nodded, fingers stroking over Benny’s arms. “Never done this before,” he acknowledged softly. “This… I like it. Feels nice.”

Benny smiled against Dean’s hair, pressing a kiss to the back of Dean’s shoulder. “Same here, cher.”

A soft hesitation. “So it was worth the wait?”

“You’ve always been worth the wait, cher,” Benny told him. A fresh pulse surged from his knot as if in agreement, and Benny couldn’t help the whisper in the back of his mind that wanted his seed to be strong enough to overcome the birth control, to make the beautiful omega in his arms pregnant. But that too would come at Dean’s pace, not at the whim of the stampeding instincts that came with an alpha’s biology. “Anybody that’s made you feel otherwise didn’t deserve you in the first place.”

A shaky breath. A tiny wriggle closer against the knot. “Thanks,” Dean offered quietly.

“Anything for you, Dean.” Benny kissed him again, lips brushing across flesh he hoped one day to be permitted to bite. “Anything you need.”


End file.
